


Sunshine Superman

by persnickett



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 00:51:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All he’d wanted to do was get away for a couple of days. An honest to God vacation, out of the city, away from the people, the smog and the noise. But of course if he’d wanted peace and quiet, maybe he should have known better than to drag Matt along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunshine Superman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Severina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/gifts).



> For Severina who bought one of my fics way back in the help_japan auction on lj.
> 
> The idea for this story originally started way WAY back during the mini-bang challenge at lj's sexy_right with this prompt (http://pics.livejournal.com/persnickett/pic/00061g8y). When I mentioned -- as I generally do -- my idea to Sev, she jumped up and down and clapped her hands a lot and said SERIOUSLY WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
> 
> Apparently? She had to buy me. And when she did she asked for established and gave me the following lovely prompts. Try to figger out which one I used, yo. :D  
> \--48 hours  
> \--for once in my life  
> \--crackerjack box  
> \--John to Matt: “Will you let me?”  
> \--shower

 

 

   
 _Sunshine came softly through my window today,_  
____  
   
   
“Matt.”  
   
The sky outside the window was already starting to pinken with the palest beginnings of dawn, but the light inside the bedroom was still a soft pearl grey, washing all the colours of the room into the ashen tones of the old noir films John’s father used to watch, and stretching wan rectangles of watery light across the ceiling.  
   
Still early, but John had a lot he wanted to accomplish today. And his first challenge was lying next to him, curled on his side with both arms tucked up under the pillow, a swath of white light cutting across his shoulder and over the sharp, jutting peak of his shoulder blade.  
   
The kid really needed to get outside once in a while, get some colour. Although it was almost a shame to ruin it; the pale, perfect canvas of this skin – the white of it seemed almost to glow in this light, like moonlight off of marble.    
   
Matt stayed still as a statue too, when John reached out and ran a hand through the strip of light, starting at the neck and moving slowly over young, sleep-warm skin all the way down his spine to cup the firm, round ass. He squeezed.  
   
Still nothing.  
   
“Matty…You awake?”  
   
“Can’t hear you,” Matt didn’t budge or even crack an eye, to give the response that came groggily over his shoulder. “Sleeping.”  
   
“Liar.”

Matt’s only response to the accusation was to raise his head off the pillow just long enough to flip it up with one of the arms underneath it and bury his head under there too.  
   
John could still see the corner of an ear sticking out from under the pillow, and he smiled silently. He knew just what to do with that.  
   
John slowly slid his hand up to curl around the sharp curve of Matt’s hip bone. He stroked his thumb over the sensitive silken skin there a couple of times before he really went to work.  
   
He could lean forward and simply murmur “wake up” into that ear, but first he bent his head to just nuzzle that neck a little. He started at the spot where it curved into Matt’s shoulder, then slowly ran just the tip of his nose all the way up to where his hair curled under his ear. Kid’s hair was getting too long too, John could bury his nose right in it.  
   
Damn but he loved this smell. He breathed deep, taking in the heavy, intoxicating extra dose of him that was Matt before his morning shower. Matt always showered right away when he got up, couldn’t wake up otherwise. He’d drag himself around the house until nearly noon if he didn’t, with bed head and sleep crusted eyes. Matt gave a deep, slow, sighing breath of his own, that told John his attentions were finally getting him somewhere.  
   
“Matt,” John said quietly, putting his lips to the shell of his ear. “…Wake up, Matt.”  
   
“No.” The pillow wasn’t enough to muffle the meaning of the terse, definitive syllable, but then Matt was already starting to push back into John’s grip, where his thumb was still rubbing slow, steady strokes into the skin.  
   
“I’ll make it worth your while.” John gave the words his best deep, purring tone.  
   
Matt turned his head enough that one eye emerged from under the pillow to glare blearily at him.  
   
“You better be talking blow job, not con job. Or like mutual masturbation and not, like, _bait shop._ ”  
   
“Can’t we do both?” John moved his thumb in a little circle.  
   
“Ugh.” Matt pulled his thoroughly sleep-tousled head out from under the pillow and flopped it down in defeat. “You drive a hard bargain, Detective.”  
   
“Mmm. Sounds like a plan,” John said, acknowledging the attempt at innuendo before he leaned forward for a soft, warm morning kiss. He kept it chaste.  
   
“Plan?” Matt blinked at him as he pulled away. “You mean ‘plan’ like for the future and not for right this second kind of ‘plan’?”  
   
John felt his mouth move into a lopsided half-smile. He loved Matt like this, all mussed up and muzzy; funky and warm-smelling. On another morning, he would put lingering kisses on both bleary eyelids, push Matt’s knee up to his chest so he could touch everywhere. Pet and stroke and sink into the warmth of that pliant, willing body, as both of them slowly came awake; as the blood stirred and their bodies woke and came to a shuddering, panting, honest to God good morning. The best kind John knew of.  
   
Just the thought was pretty stirring right now, as a matter of fact. He could feel its effects adding themselves to the usual morning state of affairs, where his body was busy rousing itself from the short night’s sleep.  
   
But not this morning. This morning he was going to take a real day off for once in his life; do some fishing, get some real R&R –  get out of the city before the morning traffic could fuck up his mood. He had a plan alright, and he was sticking to it.  
   
So this morning, he merely said “go on,” and gave that round, firm ass a quick slap for encouragement before he rolled himself heavily out of bed and to his feet. “I’ll have the coffee ready by the time you’re out of the shower.”  
   
“Up at the moist, hairy ass crack of dawn for a literal goddamn can of worms, and _now_ I have to jerk off in the shower _alone_ ,” Matt grumbled. He sat up on the edge of the bed, and rubbed a hand over his face. “Gotta tell ya John, I’m not even out of bed yet and this is already a contender for worst vacation ever. And just a word to the wise for someone who’s never been on one of the dysfunctional fun-time Farrell holidays: that is saying a hell of a lot.”  
   
“Don’t get me started on crappy holidays, kid,” John said over his shoulder as he made his way across the room to retrieve his bathrobe. “It’s a battle you can’t win.”  
   
Matt pushed his hand into his hair and tried to tug his fingers through his tangled mop before he gave it up as a bad job and dropped it to his side in frustration.  
   
“Story of my life.”  
   
John couldn’t help but smile a tad ironically at that one, as he shrugged the robe on.  
   
“You know,” Matt grumped, finally standing up to peel off his shorts and toss them in the general direction of the hamper, “you are entirely too happy for this ungodly hour.”  
   
“Ten minutes,” John ignored that last complaint. “Then I’m coming in there.”  
   
“This is a deterrent because...” Matt turned to face him, now fully nude and near fully erect, too. He draped an arm languidly over his head and raised the other in the air to stretch brazenly.  
   
The sight was tempting, that was for damn sure. But thankfully John had his robe on already and didn’t have to let on just how much.  
   
 _Fishing_ , he told himself. R&R. City traffic. …Plans.  
   
“Because I’ll be holding a cup full of cold water from the kitchen. …If you’re lucky.”  
   
“Right right, and from the toilet if I’m not. Three years in an all guys’ dorm, McClane, I know this one.” Matt yawned and scratched himself in a manner that should have been a hell of a lot less tempting, but wasn’t really.  
   
John ignored another twitch of interest from his groin and held back on a sigh. He was pretty sure he remembered a time when he didn’t feel like a complete out-of-control pervert every goddamn minute of the day.  
   
Instead he just raised an eyebrow that said that immature grabassing or not, his threat stood firm. It did the trick.  
   
“Relax,” Matt said quickly, waving his hand dismissively through the air. “I’m gone! Jeez.” Then he padded away into the hall toward the bathroom, where John was pretty sure he heard him mutter something that sounded like “...Bossy McCrotchetypants.”  
 

 ** 

   
   
 _It’ll take time, I know it..._  
____  
   
   
“C’mon, keep up,” John urged over his shoulder, for what felt like the one thousandth time.  
   
“Hey John, out of curiosity…” Matt’s voice sounded out of breath and further behind than he’d thought. John turned around to see him stumble out of the brush nearly a dozen paces behind him. “Of all the times you’ve been shot, how many of them were _in the leg_?”  
   
Smartass. John scrubbed a hand over his face. He swore he could shoot the kid right now, if he didn’t start staying on the path and _keeping up_.  
   
“You know if you’re so tired, maybe you should try giving that mouth a rest.”  
   
It had been like this all morning. John had been prepared for the fact that with the drive, and any possible delays, they might not make it to camp in time for him to get on the lake that morning but between getting all Matt’s shit into the car, and a brief but impassioned argument about trying to bring a generator and half his computer gear, by this time it was getting on for noon.    
   
At least there was always the evening, the water should be pretty quiet by then.  
   
“Go on without me,” Matt panted, throwing himself theatrically down on a nearby rock.  
   
“What? Can the drama kid,” John said, but he dropped his pack and headed back to lean over the kid and make sure nothing was actually wrong with him. “You’ve got a blister, not a busted leg. Up.”  
   
He didn’t bother pointing out that that was likely to happen when you wear flimsy canvas sneakers instead of proper hiking boots out into the bush.  
   
“I HAD a blister,” Matt argued. “The blister popped after the first fifteen million miles of this sadistic death march and now it’s just an open sore bleeding through my sock. What I HAVE is a twisted ankle…probably a _sprained_ ankle.”  
   
John squatted down to check both Matt’s ankles for heat or swelling with a careful squeeze. They were both fine.  
   
“And this.” Matt waved his hand vaguely in John’s face.  
   
“It’s a sliver. In your hand. How’s that stop you from keeping up, huh?”  
   
“I think it’s infected,” Matt lamented, looking down at it and either completely ignoring him or somehow, unfathomably, thinking that was some kind of answer. “…And I’m pretty sure you’re standing in poison ivy.”  
   
That damn book. John was going to destroy that book.  
   
Matt wouldn’t be tripping and falling and getting splinters in his hands if he wasn’t trying to walk the trail with his nose stuck in that book. The only other use for the ‘field guide’ Matt had insisted on packing, besides landing him flat on his ass now and then, seemed to be for pointing out how every single thing around them was poisonous.  
   
“That’s a…stump-stabber beetle,” he’d say, stopping to check his beloved guide and point out what looked like a run of the mill bumble-bee to John. “It’s poisonous. Good for it. And see that, what it’s sitting on? Trumpet fungus. …Yup, _poisonous_.”  
   
As if John were planning on brewing them up a batch of stump stabber beetle and trumpet fungus soup for dinner.  
   
Matt hadn’t put the damn thing away since they hit the park entrance, and he’d said, sardonically, “welcome to _Camp_ _Crystal Lake_. I totally shouldn’t have watched _Friday the 13 th_ before coming out here to spend 48 hours in the middle of  –  what the hell is THAT!?” Even now the book was still clutched tightly in his hand – the one that he wasn’t convinced was grievously injured and hideously infected.  
   
He was still staring down at the sliver morosely when John took a firm hold of the top of his backpack and hauled him to his feet by the scruff. “I’ll take it out for you when we get to camp, now c’mon.”  
 

 ** 

   
   
 _I'll pick up your hand..._  
 ______  
   
   
It was easier said than done.  
   
“Ow ow ow ow!”  
   
“I didn’t touch you yet.”  
   
“Yeah and there’s no way you’re going to,” Matt said with a sarcastic little laugh. “That’s a needle you’re holding. A needle which you just put in the _fire_. With pliers. What do we need pliers in the middle of the woods for, again? I’ve seen _Saw_ , okay McClane, if this whole ‘vacation’ deal was some sort of clever ploy to get me out here for some kind of freaky torture porn, you can count me out.”  
   
He wasn’t going to bother pointing out that there was a set of pliers in every tackle box worth a damn in America. Fishing was a bit of a sore point by now. Setting up camp and getting the fire going had taken the rest of the afternoon, but maybe John would head out after getting Matt squared away. Twilight would be the best time for fish to bite, anyway.  
   
“This from the guy who just last night used the words ‘pound’ and ‘harder’ in bed before we left.”  
   
At least his teasing retort was successful in pulling the first smile out of the kid John had seen since they left. But it didn’t last long.  
   
“I’m very selective about how I like my pain to be—don’t don’t don’t touch it!!” Matt exclaimed, and pulled his hand out of John’s gentle hold before he could get any where near it with the needle.  
   
It seemed like maybe he wasn’t altogether joking about this needle phobia business. John sighed.  
   
“Okay okay,” Matt said, holding up his un-injured hand in the air in placation. “I’m serious though John, maybe we should just put a band-aid over it or something instead of sticking red hot needles in there.”  
   
“It’s cooled off already. Look, I’m holding it with my fingers for chrissakes. I had to put it in the fire to sterilize it.”  
   
“I know, I’m just…It’s all swollen and shit.” Matt poked at his palm experimentally with a finger. “It hurts.”  
   
“Yup,” John agreed. “That’s because you were right; it’s infected. That’s why I gotta get the thing outta there. And we should do it before it gets too dark for me to see what the hell I’m doing.”  
   
“Right. Because that’s the last thing I need. Your big blunt sausage fingers fumbling a tiny needle around in my flesh _and working_ _blind_.”  
   
“Your hands are practically the same size as mine,” he argued, before he could stop himself.  
   
 _Sausage fingers?_ Well, hell. John made a mental note that if the kid ever had to have anything like a real surgery in the future, to have a talk with him beforehand about saying shit out loud that could get a guy on the wrong side of the doctor who was going to be wielding the scalpel.  
   
“I know, I know,” Matt was on a roll now, flipping both hands through the air while he talked, so there was no way John could catch a hold of the one that needed attention without probably hurting him for real. “You think I haven’t heard a million times by now – at least half of that million being from your charmer of a daughter by the way – how _hilarious_ it is how skinny I am but then I have these hands and always trip over my own big stupid feet? But these are typist’s fingers, okay?” Matt went on, wiggling them in John’s face to demonstrate. “They’re like very deft and nimble and detail-oriented and I’m just saying your hands are…fuller okay? They’re more suited to feats of strength and things like crushing and punching, and wrapping around— ”  
   
“ _Matt_.” John kept his voice quiet through sheer force of will, but it seemed to work just fine to get his attention. Matt went silent and waited while he rubbed at his forehead and tried to focus on keeping a slow pulse and a steady hand – just like getting ready to fire a weapon. “Will you just…will you _let_ me?”  
   
“Fine.” Matt held out his hand with its admittedly swollen-looking palm and let John wrap his big, crushing, sausage fingers around his wrist. Jesus.  
   
Then he dropped his gaze to the dirt between his sneakers so his hair flopped forward into his face and he wouldn’t have to watch what John was doing with the needle. Didn’t seem to have the same control over his mouth though, not that it came as a surprise.  
   
“…And not to put any pressure on the situation or anything,” Matt babbled, before John could even get started. “I know you’re holding a needle and doing a highly delicate procedure, but I just want to remind you my hands are kind of my livelihood, John, you know when I can’t type for a couple of days I get—OW! Shit. Ok see that? That is what I’m talking about that I would really like to not have happen again, so from here on in can we try t—“  
   
“Done!” John interrupted the stream of prattle, holding up the needle for a good look at the crooked sliver of wood clinging to its tip. “Highly delicate procedure,” he said.  
   
Turned out the bastard was actually pretty long; couldn’t have been comfortable. And John knew from experience that the sting of the disinfectant he brought out of the first aid kit next had to hurt worse than taking the damn thing out, but Matt didn’t bitch about that part. John saw his jaw line harden a little, but that was it.

Then John really did put a band-aid over it, and a little kiss for good measure.  
   
“All better?” he crooned, in an exaggerated, mock solicitous tone.  
   
Matt punched him in the shoulder – the good one – and told him not to be an asshole. Now both of them were grinning. John deemed the surgery an official success.  
   
“I know I was being a baby,” Matt conceded, as they both looked down at John’s handiwork. “I was just joking around. …Mostly. But I am serious that when we get home if I get a huge pus-filled infection from blackened sewing needles and I can’t type I’m going to be in a really…what are you doing?”  
   
“…Highly…delicate…procedure…” John replied, punctuating his words with more gentle kisses to the hot, swollen surface of Matthew’s palm, his fingers, the thin, sensitive skin on the inside of his wrist.  
   
The late afternoon light had already turned golden and the sun had angled down low, to filter through the trees into the camp site. The dappled yellow light was setting Matt off with an inviting looking midsummer’s glow – the merrily crackling fire at John’s back tossing out little sparks that reflected in his eyes, and when John looked up at them, they were giving him _that_ look.   
   
So when he tugged a little on the wrist he was still holding, to push one of Matt’s fingers into his mouth, Matt rewarded him with a sharp hissing noise of surprise and moved eagerly forward, to kneel in the dirt between John’s knees. And when he ran his free hand up John’s thigh, and started to pull on the finger that John was holding so willingly captive toward waiting lips like he had a fish of his own on the line, John figured he still had a little time left before he had to get down to the lake.  
 

 ** 

   
   
 _…and slowly blow your little mind  
_____  
   
   
“There are so _many_ ,” Matt breathed, from beside him. They were stretched on their backs in the sand with their heads next to each other, bodies pointing in opposite directions like the hands of a clock reading twelve thirty. “It’s easy to forget they’re there sometimes, isn’t it? With all the light pollution from the city.”  
   
Leave it to Matt to refer to something like a man-made city light as _pollution_. But the awe in his voice couldn’t be faked, for once there wasn’t a trace of irony in the kid’s tone.  
   
It was true, it was a clear night and there really were a lot of stars out. John stayed quiet, looking up at them and listening to the soft lapping sounds from the water’s edge. He never had gotten out on the lake. They’d both been pretty hungry after the things they’d gotten up to by the fire, and cooking anything decent to eat over an open flame always took some time. When they finally tucked into a couple of cowboy steaks and some potatoes wrapped in foil and baked in the coals, though, they’d both agreed it was worth the wait. At least there was always tomorrow morning.  
   
Afterward, with both of them sated and happy, Matt’s suggestion that they grab the flashlight and wander the thirty yards or so down to the water was probably more about finding something to do than trying to burn off the heavy meal.  
   
“Some of them are dead, you know?” Matt mused, still apparently captivated by the night sky. “Gone supernova hundreds of years ago. We just see them now because the light takes that long to get to us, they’re just _that_ _far_ away.”  
   
They didn’t seem that far away. John felt like he could reach right up and grab the Big Dipper by its crooked old handle.  
   
“I did not know that,” he said primly. He put up a hand to wind Matt’s hair between his fingers. “Tell me more, Professor?”  
   
“Just for that I will, jackass,” Matt replied, nudging his head into the touch like an affectionate cat. “Think about it, that means there’s thousands more being born all the time that we can’t see yet. It always kills me how big everything is. …How small we are, I guess.”  
   
John turned his head, trying to make out Matt’s profile by nothing but starlight. He couldn’t see much by the silvery, ethereal light of planets billions of miles away, just the pale curve of his forehead; the bridge of his young, never-broken nose a faintly white line in the darkness.  
   
“When I was eight,” Matt said dreamily, “I got the chicken pox. I had to stay in my room all the time so my brother and sister wouldn’t catch it – David caught it anyway of course, Dave always got _everything_ , even though it was Emily we couldn’t keep out of my room. She was only six, she didn’t really get it – but I was _so_ _bored_ in there. Two weeks felt like forever back then. In the first couple of days I had burned through all the books in the house at least once, so my Dad…”  
   
Matt paused, and John gave up trying to search his features out in the dim light. He could only hope it was to smile, but he doubted it. Matt didn’t talk about his father much.  
   
“There isn’t much to tell,” John remembered him saying, on the rare occasions John asked about it. “He wasn’t around a lot.”    
   
From what John could gather, the one thing Matt’s father _had_ been good at, was buying gifts. The guilty kind. John knew it well. His memory flashed without his permission on the gargantuan teddy bear he’d bought for Lucy the first Christmas after Holly moved the kids to LA.  
   
John flicked at the soft ends of the lock of hair wrapped around his index finger and waited for Matt to find his voice again.  
   
“…My dad bought me this big massive telescope and he helped me set it up by my window and check out the stars,” he was saying now. A pretty slick present, sure enough.  
   
John didn’t need to be able to read Matt’s expression to know why this memory stuck with the kid the way it did; that the time his old man had taken with him setting that big expensive telescope up, and maybe showing him how to use it a little, meant more to him than the showy ostentatious gift ever could. At the time, Matt probably would have been just as happy with something out of a crackerjack box, as long as it came with a little fatherly attention.  
   
“The first night I looked through that telescope, oh man. It blew my fuckin’ mind.” Matt chuckled at the memory. “I got really into astronomy for a while. It was what made me want to go to Space Camp. …Then I guess I got distracted, moved on to other stuff.”  
   
“Freddie,” said John.  
   
Matt had probably come to regret letting it slip, almost a year ago now, that the first time he’d found himself developing a crush on another boy was at camp. John could never get him to say who, but that just made it all the more obvious. To this day Matt’s voice still took on a quiet reverence sometimes when he talked about the guy’s computer knowledge, like he was some kind of a god.  
   
“…I was going to say video games.” Matt snorted. “But yeah,” he admitted.  
   
John smiled up at the North Star, even if Matt couldn’t see it in the dark. He should be jealous or something, and maybe later he would be. Right now he couldn’t be bothered. It was ‘the _Warlock’_ , for fucks sake. Hardly competition.  
   
Besides, he was feeling too laid-back to care, looking up at the stars and taking in this new Matt, relaxed and open. Actually letting him in on what was happening in that big overdeveloped brain of his, without a lot of nervous chatter just to get to the point. Matt talked a hell of a lot, but he pretty much never told John anything. Not about himself that is. About conspiracy theories and poisonous stump beetles and government cover-ups and the evils of genetically modified corn products, sure.  
   
Seeing Matt like this, without the sarcasm and the hard edges was a perk to getting away that John hadn’t figured on. It was new.  
   
Then suddenly he couldn’t see anything at all, something dark had blotted out the tiny myriad lightpoints of the stars altogether. The familiar tickle of hair brushing his forehead told him Matt was rolling up on a shoulder to loom over him.  
   
“Guess I have kind of a hero-worship issue, huh?” he murmured, before leaning down to press his mouth over John’s.  
   
The upside down kiss was a new sensation too. He could feel Matt’s chin brush the tip of his nose, and then rather than going for the bottom lip like he so often did, Matt sucked John’s top lip into his mouth, licked at his tongue, and then moved on to take the bottom one between his teeth for good measure. He ran his tongue over the edge of it, making John grunt.  
   
John took the kid’s face between both his hands, fingers coming to rest under his jaw, and brush at the sensitive flesh of his throat, instead of stretching up into his hair. Matt made a little ‘mmph’ sound as John pulled him closer, putting a little pressure into the kiss and then returning the favour, running his tongue over Matthew’s top lip and drawing it into his mouth to suck firmly. Matt gave a heavy, hot breath into John’s mouth and moved his tongue to slide against John’s, and when John angled his head a little and tangled their tongues together, Matt responded heatedly, pushing closer and moaning in a way that made John feel like he was seeing stars all over again.  
   
But obviously the whole thing reminded Matt of one of his stupid movies because when he finally pulled away he completely ruined the mood by putting on a falsetto twitter and sighing, “ _do you love me, Peter Parker?_ ”  
   
Okay. If Matt wanted to screw around, that’s what they would do. It had been a long time since he’d done this, but he figured he could still manage it with a guy Matt’s size, and off his guard, too. John arched his back, and reached all the way up over Matt’s shoulder to grab his belt.  
   
“Oh shit,” Matt said, as John’s other arm moved under the spot where Matt was propping himself up on his elbows to snake across his chest but it was too late, John already had his hold.  
   
“Who’s this Peter guy!?” he growled playfully, and then brought his hips down hard, pulling on Matt’s beltline and rolling with the momentum so that Matt’s legs flipped up through the air. Matt tucked his head into John’s shoulder as he somersaulted over him, and  John kept rolling with it, so they both ended up in a seated position, Matt’s ass coming down with a dull thump in the sand between John’s outstretched legs.  
   
“Holy fuck.”  
   
John just smiled and tightened the arm around Matt’s chest. Not bad for an old guy. His shoulder twinged with the movement, but he ignored it. It had been a while since it had started feeling good enough to forget about, like he’d just done. He had a feeling he’d regret it in the morning but for now John decided to call that a good sign, and waited for Matt’s move.  
   
There was a time when Matt would have just sat there and whined about shit like asthma, or low blood sugar, but John had been working with him on that, and tonight Matt didn’t disappoint. He dug his heels into the sand, and with a grunt, shoved backward hard enough to take John back to the ground again.  
   
“While I might believe,” Matt huffed, gripping John’s arm still across his chest, “if there is one person in the world who could have missed the momentous, decade-defining moment of cheese that is the upside down kissing scene with Kirsten Dunst,” Matt rolled into the direction of the hold instead of trying to wriggle away from it, just like John taught him.  “…plastered all over billboards and broadcasted relentlessly into the living rooms of the nation in that epic trailer, that yes, it would be you,” Matt’s gambit worked, and he broke John’s hold, rolling off of him to the right.  
   
“…I refuse to believe you don’t know that Peter Parker is Spiderman,” he panted. “It’s like not knowing who Clark Kent is.”  
   
“Superman,” John said, simply, raising the arm that was now pinned under Matt’s back to get it behind his head and draw him forward for a headlock. “Too easy.”  
   
“Spoiler!” Matt gasped, wrapping a leg around John’s and pulling upward so his back arched and he couldn’t pull Matt’s head to his chest for the hold. Matt could duck out of it now.  
   
 “Batman?” he quizzed, when he was free.  
   
“Bruce Banner,” John grunted, as Matt went for the arm. He still had his leg hooked firmly around John’s thigh.  
   
“Bruce WAYNE, Bruce Banner is The Incredible Hulk!”  
   
Matt was so scandalized my John’s lack of comic savvy he hesitated, and John followed his own advice, rolling toward the hold and up, so that he was leaning over Matt now, pinning him down with a forearm across the lean, heaving chest.  
   
“The green guy?” John asked. “I thought that was Scott…something.”  
   
“Adam Scott is a Green Lantern,” it was hard to make out in the dark, but this close up he could see that Matt’s eyes were rolling.  
   
“The guy with the arrows.”

“The Green _Arrow_ would be the guy with the arrows,” Matt complained. “Now you’re just saying things to hurt me.”  
   
“I could never hurt you, Mary Jane,” John drawled slowly, leaning down for a right-side up kiss.  
   
“Mary Jane,” Matt scoffed, when John drew back again. “I knew it! Nobody could be _that_ out of it about popular culture. For a guy who claims to be able to tell when everyone is lying, you sure do a shitty job of it yourself.”  
   
John couldn’t help a short chuckle. “Eh, it’s why you love me.”  
   
John couldn’t really see Matt’s face, and maybe that’s why he didn’t see it coming. He’d forgotten Matt still had that leg hooked around his thigh. Without warning, the other one came up around the small of his back, while the first one yanked his knee out from under him. Suddenly John was on his back again with Matt straddling him, and holding one arm gently across his throat in symbolic conquest.

Well, damn.  
   
“I love you,” Matt purred, leaning forward to bite at John’s lower lip the way he liked to, “because you’re going to take me back up the hill to our tent and fuck my brains out like you promised this morning.”  Matt wriggled against him, letting him feel the effect that all the kissing – and maybe the roughhousing too – had had on him.  
   
The feel of it made a thrill of warmth shoot upward from his gut into his chest, as John’s body started working on a reaction of its own. John realized he was cold and slightly damp. The sand had long ago given up the heat of the day, and the grit on his fingers probably wouldn’t be appreciated if he tried to put them anywhere Matt had him thinking about now.  
   
Heading back to the tent suddenly sounded like a great idea.  
   
“Deal,” John agreed, stealing one last kiss before tapping Matt’s arm a couple of times, both in recognition of his little victory and to get him moving. “Let’s see if we can wake the neighbours, huh?”  
 

 ** 

_Any trick in the book now, baby…_   
______

  
   
“The fuck?”  
   
They were the first words John heard, and they jolted him awake. From the looks of the light through the translucent tent walls, it was much earlier than Matt’s usual choice of hour to join the living.  
   
“Whasswrong?” John asked, rolling over hurriedly. Matt’s hair was a spectacular scene, and he was sitting bolt upright with his eyes looking just as wild.  
   
“I’m _wet_. How am I wet!?”  
   
John let his head fall back, and put the heel of his hand to his eye, to push away some of the gritty sleep. “That’s why I toldja to bring a ground sheet, kid.”  
   
“I did!”  
   
“You brought a sheet,” John corrected him.  
   
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry Mantracker. Not all of us are Survivorman, okay. Some of us, who don’t make a regular habit of driving out hundreds of miles from the nearest Starbucks to be completely cut off from civilization, don’t know what a ‘ground sheet’ _is_. If you meant we were going to have to wrap ourselves in bear repellent plastic tarpaulin, you should have said ‘hey Matt, remember to bring your gigantic bear repellent plastic tarpaulin’.”  
   
“Wouldja stop whining and get over here already?” John pulled at the corner of his own, perfectly dry, sleeping bag, making the zipper open up down the length of the side with a high pitched metallic whine that sounded much louder than it should in the quiet of the morning.  
   
Matt clambered in gratefully and spooned up in front of him, pressing his ass directly up against John’s crotch. He wasn’t all that wet.  
   
“Stoppit,” Matt muttered, when John pressed closer, sliding a hand over the warm, bare skin of his chest. “I’m sleeping.”  
   
“Kid,” John said, voice still thick and gravelly with sleep, “you have got to be the worst liar in history.” He rasped the stubble on his chin over Matt’s nape, then tipped his head a little to take his earlobe between his teeth.  
   
Matt made a low sound that started as a growl and ended up something like a giggle, before giving a sudden sharp intake of breath and flailing wildly out of John’s grasp.  
   
“What the HELL. IS. THAT!?” Finding himself suddenly alone in his sleeping bag, John followed Matt’s gaze. “How did it even get in here?”  
   
On the other side of the tent, clinging high up the wall, was a large and exotic looking insect that admittedly looked more like part of a tree than it did like a bug.  
   
Matt was crawling over his own sleeping bag that, moments ago, had been too wet to be habitable.  
   
“I’ll take toxic flora and fauna of the North American woodlands for 500, Alex,” Matt announced, reaching under the balled up hoodie he was using as a pillow and producing his ever-present field guide and a hard little case John rarely caught sight of, but knew to contain Matt’s glasses.  
   
“You’re _sleeping_ with that thing?” That was it.  
   
Matt never even got the damn thing open. John had it out of his hand, and had already cuffed him over the head with it before he was even done sliding his thick, black-rimmed specs onto his nose.  
   
“Wow,” Matt said, rubbing at the back of his head and scowling. “Really? Physical violence? Very mature.”  
   
John didn’t have time for a comeback, he was too busy unzipping the tent door and grabbing his boots.  
   
“What, where are you going?”  
   
And _only_ his boots.  
   
“Where are you going without your _pants_!?”  
   
He could hear Matt calling after him about the number of species of biting insects in the area, and how he was kind of invested in the merchandise in question, and by the time he got to the part about how if John got poison ivy on his dick, Matt wasn’t sucking it for a good two weeks, his voice was raised to a shout. Sounded like Matt had taken John’s suggestion that they wake up the neighbours as a personal challenge.  
   
John didn’t turn around though. He tromped right down to the water, and with a final heave, _Sassacre’s Field Guide to the North American Wilderness_ was nothing more than a set of rings rippling outward over the water’s glasslike surface. John stood there in nothing but his boots, bare to the morning air, watching them till they faded out of sight without a single trace of regret.  
   
The water was perfect, calm, reflecting the trees that crowded the shore stretching up into the grey of the morning sky back at him like a mirror. There was a slip of canoes for park patrons to use, not a half a mile up the water’s edge from their site, John had picked this site carefully when he’d been planning this trip.   
   
All he’d wanted to do was get away for a couple of days. An honest to God _vacation_ , out of the city, away from the people, the smog and the noise. But of course if he’d wanted peace and quiet, maybe he should have known better than to drag Matt along.  
   
John turned around to make his way back up the hill. He could still see the imprints he and Matt had left in the sand the night before; the scuffle and swipe marks from their playful tussling, and a little mound beside the place where Matt had lain. He must have built it up with his hands while they lounged and talked quietly, before the serious moment had turned into a sloppy makeout session followed by half-assed wrestling and John had dragged him back up the hill to their tent. It was pobably from when he was telling that story about his old man and the telescope. Matt never could keep his hands still. Especially not when he was nervous.  
   
If there was one thing John could be sure of without having to ask, it was that Matt’s father had probably never taken him out camping or fishing, or to go hiking or canoeing.  
   
He could still remember the first time he brought Jack and Lucy here.  Jack was afraid of the woods after dark and he made them pack up and leave on the first night, but to this day, it was still the best trip John could remember.  
   
Lucy caught her first fish that trip. It was a tiny pickerel but luckily John caught enough himself to make them a decent dinner over the fire. Of course when the time came to clean the fish it turned out Lucy had given every last one in the bucket a name – hers was called Kenny – and insisted that John throw Kenny and every single one of his compatriots back.  
   
The hot dogs and marshmallows they roasted over the fire instead probably weren’t what Holly would have called a balanced meal, but they were definitely a lot more fun.    
   
John supposed peace and quiet hadn’t been his only reasons for wanting to come here. Part of it was probably the memories. There were days he felt like those memories were all he had left of his kids.  
   
Lucy had never gotten her big bear that infamous Christmas. But she’d been so happy to see _Daddy_ on Christmas morning her eyes had lit up brighter than the tree, and she had run forward to throw her arms around his legs and hug his knees tight.  
   
After that, John had always tried to spend time rather than money on his kids. It had never seemed to come easy though, and Lucy didn’t call him Daddy any more these days. A good day now was when he was ‘John’ and not ‘asshole’.  
   
Then again, John thought, raising a boot to flatten the compulsive little heap of sand Matt’s hands had busied themselves with while he reminisced about his father – at least _his_ kids talked to him.  
   
Sometimes John wondered if it was something about this generation he would just never understand. Sure, his own father hadn’t been around all the time either. He worked hard as a New York City cop, just like his boy after him, and nobody knew like John did the hours that meant a man might have to keep. But the times they did have together had counted, and for a day to come when they wouldn’t have been on speaking terms, was just too much for John’s imagination to fathom. Who the hell else would have taught him to fish; to tie a fly and to cast a line?  
   
It couldn’t be just the nostalgia that had John out here though, he’d had years on his own to come out here whenever he had a few days off in a block, but he never did. Some part of him obviously had wanted to do this _with Matt._    
   
That was it. John wanted to make new memories. He wanted to make them with Matt. But maybe this just hadn’t been the right way to do it. Since the moment they’d left home Matt had only seemed to hate the idea. _Contender for worst vacation ever_ , he’d said.   
   
At first John had simply taken it for more of Matt’s usual MO for giving him a hard time, and then as with most things John told him to do, Matt had proven pretty easy to convince. Sure enough he’d tagged along, but now everything they did just seemed like a big sacrifice for the kid.  
   
Maybe that was John’s fault. Maybe camping just wasn’t Matt’s thing. It was pretty clear the closest thing Matt had gotten to camp as a kid was Space Camp and from the looks of Freddie, it wasn’t the most outdoorsy sort of camp experience a kid could sign up for.  
   
John turned back to the lake and watched the last of the Field Guide’s rings ripple out into oblivion, leaving the surface smooth and still again and the lure of lake trout over the fire for an early dinner beckoned.  
   
Maybe John couldn’t make Matt have a good time, but he could finally do what he came for. All he had to do was hike back up the hill to their encampment, grab his tackle box – and probably some pants – and make his way out to that canoe slip and he could be out on the water within the half hour. Matt had probably gone back to doing the one thing he could enjoy out here, and would be sleeping in for a while, anyway.  
   
Sure enough, when John made his way back up the hill, Matt was sprawled on John’s side of the tent, but he raised his head when John crawled in next to him.  
   
“Hey,” he said muzzily, before breaking into a yawn. He’d fallen asleep with his glasses still on. “You’re back. I didn’t hear you come in.”  
   
“That’s ‘cause you passed out with the door open. You’d think a guy who was that worried about bugs would have zipped up the tent.”  
   
“You’re the one who rushed off with it open.” Matt raised the back of his hand to his eye then made a face when the movement bumped his glasses. He’d clearly forgotten he was wearing them.  He jammed a finger in behind the lens to rub the sleep from his eye, instead. “…You threw my field guide in the lake, didn’t you?”  
   
John just smiled, and reached forward to gently pull Matt’s glasses away from his face. He actually quite liked these things, as much as Matt tried to avoid them. He knew Matt would just go off on him about _stereotypes_ or something if he said they made him look even smarter, but he remembered his uncle Henry having a pair just like it when he was young, and his Uncle Henry had been a smart, classy guy. John couldn’t remember ever seeing him dressed in anything but a suit.  
   
Matt chose them because he thought they were _ironic_ or something, but John honestly thought they had kind of the opposite effect, the way they made him look…softer somehow, more serious and earnest. But right now they were in the way.  
   
“Okay,” Matt said, letting him press their foreheads together, but not tilting up to meet his lips for a kiss, just yet. “That’s just…you know what? Don’t blame me when you’re in the hospital suffering from random deadly snakebite venom,” he went on, as John wound an arm around his waist. “Because if there’s a snake in these woods, and God knows there probably is, the person to find it would be you, McClane.”  
   
Matt put up a hand to shove playfully at his chest, but didn’t push hard enough to put any distance between them.  
   
“The only animal you gotta worry about is me, kid.” John grinned, tugging hard enough on the arm around Matt’s hips to bring them up against his own.  
   
“God,” Matt huffed, and rolled his eyes, but he finally let John push their mouths together for a firm, warm kiss.  
   
John really did love Matt like this, all warm skin and lax limbs, before he got up and washed away all the slow, sleepy softness with too-hot showers and too much coffee. He started working at leaving a trail of kisses over the line of his jaw, just barely starting to bristle with the sparse fuzz Matt called a beard, and when he made his way to the hollow under Matt’s ear, to nestle his nose into the soft mass of his hair… John suddenly remembered the other reason he’d picked this site out so carefully.  
   
“C’mon,” John said, pulling away and giving Matthew a couple quick taps on the ass to get him to open his eyes.  
   
“What? Where?”  
   
“I got a surprise for you.”  
   
“Now?” Matt fairly groaned.  
   
“Now. Bring your bag, c’mon.”  
   
It was almost as slow going as getting Matt here in the first place.  
   
“Y’know if you wanted me to brush my teeth first, I could have just taken my water bottle and…” Matt’s groggy grumbling trailed off when he caught sight of John’s surprise.  
   
“Oh no. No WAY!” Matt cheered. “Are they hot?”  
   
Not a quarter mile up a winding foot path from their site, stood the showers.  
   
“Might have to let ‘em run for a bit, first,” John answered, but Matt was already running past him and forward to find out.  
   
By the time John made it to the stand of stalls, Matt was already stripped and letting the water run, with one hand under the spray.  
   
“Wait wait, where do you think you’re going?” Matt asked him, when John went for the door of the neighbouring shower stall.  
   
“Kid,” John reproached him, “this is a family place.”  
   
“There’s nobody around for _miles._ ” Matt insisted, stepping out of his stall barefoot and completely stark naked. He was half hard already in anticipation, and John felt some of the blood knock off work in his brain and start heading south for vacation.  
   
“If there was,” Matt crooned, pushing himself up against John’s chest, “they would have been scared off this morning when I was yelling obscene things at the top of my lungs about sucking on your dick.”   
   
Even fully clothed, Matt pressing his unclothed form all up against John’s body like that made him feel hot all over. Maybe there really never _had_ been a time he wasn’t a hopeless pervert.  
   
“Cut it out and get back in there.”  
   
“Only if you come with me,” Matt insisted, wiggling back and forth a little.  
   
“Jeez, get you out in the woods – kicking and screaming by the way – and then you turn into some kind of nymphomaniac.”  
   
Matt responded by wrapping his arms around John’s waist and sliding his hands down to cup his ass.  
   
“Hey,” he teased, stretching upward on bare tiptoes to nibble at John’s lip. “I have three addictions to manage, here: caffeine, the Internet, and John McClane.”  
   
“Caffeine I can do,” John promised, “when we get back to camp.”  
   
Matt just raised an eyebrow and swivelled his hips in a movement that made all the heat flushing John’s skin everywhere rush hurriedly to a more focused location.  
   
“Go,” John said, knowing the hitch in his voice would be an unequivocal ‘yes’ in Matt’s ears. He pinched Matt on the curve of his naked butt, before taking hold of his shoulders and turning him around. If anyone _did_ come this way looking for a shower this early, it would be better for them to catch them soaping each other down inside the stall, than to be exposed to the full glory of the show Matt was putting on right now.  
   
John took his time stripping out of his clothes and leaving them on the little bench by the shower door – all the better to watch Matt raise his hands and tip his head back, letting the water soak his hair and flow down his neck and shoulders, to form little rivers running down the smooth chest.  
   
It didn’t last long though, before Matt was impatiently reaching for John’s wrists to drag him forward into the spray. John’s hand came up, as if on reflex, to Matt’s chest, fingers breaking the course of the water to feel the wet skin warming under its flow. Matt ignored the touch, wasting no time in taking him by the shoulders and spinning them around, to push John under the shower.  
   
“Hot water in the middle of the fucking woods!” Matt exalted, mirroring John’s earlier motion by bringing both hands up to his chest, and rubbing in circles, sloshing the warmth of the water everywhere. “You’re a beautiful man, John McClane, anyone ever tell you that?”  
   
It was so good to see him with a smile about something out here, John couldn’t resist putting a hand to the back of the kid’s skull, fingers tangling in the wet strands of his hair, and pulling him forward to wipe it right off his face.  
   
Matt was panting when John released him, but he pushed him back further into the water. Then he reached up to stroke at John’s scalp where the water began to bead and run off in little rivulets with that same fascinated look he still got, every time they did this.  
   
John grabbed for the soap, before they got too worked up to remember the point of all this, but it really shouldn’t have come as any surprise when that got quickly out of hand, too. Matt’s skin was so hot now, and slippery. John’s palms slid deliciously over miles of smooth skin – the flat plane of his belly, the sharp curve of his shoulders and the round rise of his ass. He couldn’t seem to stop rubbing and stroking; the pads of his soapy fingers pressing into the skin to feel the firm young muscle beneath.  
   
John could hear himself breathing heavily from just this, just from the feel of Matt’s body under his hands, from watching Matt’s head tip back and his eyes fall shut in reaction to the rapt attention. So when Matt surged forward to kiss him again, hard, John let him.  
   
“You know, you really are beautiful,” Matt breathed, pulling back a little ways to stare up at him and reaching up to trail soapy fingers over the curve of John’s head again.  
   
John nipped playfully at his lip. “The lines you used on your high school girlfriends aren’t gonna work on me, kid.”  
   
“No?” Matt smirked. “What about this?”  
   
He rubbed his hands through the lather on his chest, gathering as much as he could before putting both those slick, soapy hands to work – one coming up under John’s balls, the other curling tightly around his now rock hard shaft.  
   
John groaned and let his head drop forward to rest against Matthew’s.  
   
“Yeah, that’s it,” Matt whispered, reassuringly. “There’s no one here.”  
   
The first downward pull felt like every nerve in his body had ripped up stakes and moved camp to his groin, to live happily under the rule of Matt’s hand. Every nerve that is, until the wicked, slippery fingers of the other hand stretched back to stroke into the cleft of his ass, and John swore that sparks flew behind his eyelids.  
   
His own hands started to wander and John started touching again, roving over the slippery angles of Matt’s shoulders, stopping to rub tight circles over his nipples before travelling down to return the favour – to wrap around and stroke and tease. Matt made a mewling sound that made John’s breath stop.  
   
He hadn’t meant for things to get this far, but they were here now, and John picked up the pace, tipped his head down to crush his mouth against Matt’s, to stifle and swallow those intoxicating little moaning sounds.  
   
It wasn’t long before Matt’s hand stilled on John’s cock. He broke off the kiss and pressed his forehead into John’s shoulder, and John tightened his grip just a fraction. When Matt actually got quiet for once in his life – that’s when John knew the kid was close.  
   
But suddenly Matt was shoving at him.  
   
“Stop,” he was gasping, “stop stop stop John, please.”  
   
“What?” John let the kid go instantly, and looked around over his shoulder. The woods were still deserted. “What’s the matter?”  
   
“I didn’t want to go yet,” Matt panted. “I want you to fuck me.”  
   
John’s hesitation must have been all over his face because Matt kept talking before he could say anything.  
   
“Please, John, I want to feel you.” Matt swivelled his wrist and gave another of those downward squeezing tugs that made John feel like he might bite right through his tongue.  
   
“What, are you sure?” John asked him, breathlessly. “You need a break after last night.”  
   
“Can we let me be the judge of what I need?” Matt asked, nuzzling John’s nose in a little Eskimo kiss, and squeezing him again before letting go.  
   
“We didn’t bring anything,” John argued, even with his voice rough with obvious need.  
   
“This’ll be okay.” Matt turned and picked up a little bottle he’d put out on the top of the stall wall.  
   
“Shampoo? I thought you wanted me to fuck you, not give you an enema, kid.”  
   
Matt let out a single crack of laughter, as he flipped up the cap on the bottle.  
   
“Trust you not to know conditioner when you see it!” He rubbed the top of John’s scalp mischievously and moved closer for another kiss.  
   
The kiss didn’t stop, it got deeper, and hotter as Matt opened up for him; raised his tongue to meet Johns and to push into his mouth hungrily. Matt drove forward, pushing them back into the heat of the spray and reaching back with his handful of conditioner. John took it in, revelled in the forceful kiss and let Matt do the honours. He was probably still tender from last night’s romp.  
   
Besides, fuck if it wasn’t fifteen kinds of hot to feel the sharp little breaths and hear the sexy-as-hell little moans Matt made as he teased and prepared himself.  
   
“Okay,” Matt said, raggedly, when he finally pulled away, then let out a laugh when John greedily chased after his lips for another of those hot, aggressive kisses. “Okay, I’m ready, c’mere.”  
   
“Okay,” John agreed, roughly, pulling him up close and using a hand to guide himself between his thighs and just into the cleft between his cheeks, at first.  
   
“No,” Matt panted, disentangling himself to turn around and brace both his hands on the tiled wall, legs spread and fingers splayed wide. “Like this. Hard.”  
   
“Jesus, Matthew.”  
   
John couldn’t deny he liked it like this. Matt was gorgeous from this angle, all long, slim columns of trim muscle; one endless expanse of smooth, cream hued skin, currently gleaming with beads of water like clinging diamonds. Not to mention the way the lanky, lean thighs led up to that ass of his.  
   
John put one hand out for the small of his back, the other for the little bottle of conditioner. He ran his hand all the way up the wet length of Matt’s spine, feeling the shiver that chased after it, before squeezing a little more of the stuff into his palm.  
   
The stuff was slippery enough, John figured, as he coated himself. Matt twisted his neck to look over his shoulder, and caught him biting his lip as he did it.  
   
“What’s going on back there?”  
   
“Patience is a virtue,” John grunted, pushing himself into the rut between Matt’s ass cheeks, and rubbing, spreading the slick lotion around and sending a hot bolt of sensation speeding through his loins.  
   
“We can be virtuous _after_ the hardcore sodomy,” Matt snarked, shifting upward and thrusting back so that the tip of John’s dick nudged his opening, and he sighed.  
   
John liked that sound, he leaned forward and sucked Matt’s earlobe into his mouth to hear it again.  
   
Matt groaned and pushed back, and John figured taking it slow just wasn’t on Matt’s agenda, but he washed handfuls of warm water over him, and stroked his shoulders and chest and belly gently as he pushed gradually forward, warming his flesh and washing all the traces of soap carefully away so he could lean down and put his mouth to all that sweetly fresh wet skin.  
   
Matt moaned, and shuddered when John finally got where Matt wanted him to be.  
   
“Like that?” John rasped in his ear, but the only answer he got was a bossy backward thrust, and Matt shifting his hands to grip the top of the wall.  
   
“Like that,” Matt said finally. “Hard, c’mon.”  
   
John set up a rhythm that was slow at first, but Matt’s refrain of ‘harder’ and ‘yes’ had John grunting and their flesh slapping together loud enough to be heard over the sound of the water in short time. When Matt got quiet again though, and his knuckles were white on the edge of the tile, John moved fast, pulling him back against his chest so he could hook his chin over Matt’s shoulder and see the water cascading over the perfection of his skin, watch the pearl white ropes of Matt’s come paint his knuckles.  
   
And then he was feeling it too – the quaking squeeze and pulse of Matt’s orgasm pulling John after him, making his thrusts fall out of rhythm and his breath turn ragged and his knees go weak. He let Matt crumple forward up against the wall again, and John went with him, gasping and holding on for dear life, as jolt after jolt of white, searing pleasure shot through him until he thought he just might black out.  
   
“Thank you,” Matt told him, leaning forward for an easy, sated kiss as soon John was steady again on his feet. “This was a bitch’n surprise.”  
   
“Bitch’n,” John agreed, but he wasn’t out of tricks yet. “I got one more for ya,” he said, as they rinsed themselves off and finally shut the water off. “That outhouse up the path there has running water too. Should have a sink and a mirror, you can put your contacts back in if you want to…hell, the toilet might even flush.”  
   
“I _love_ you.”  
   
“I know,” John told him, tossing a towel over the kids’ head.  
   
“Spoken like a true Star Wars Guy, Han Solo,” Matt laughed, and raised his hands over the rough terry cloth to rub rapidly at his hair.  
   
When they finally got back to camp it was starting to get a little late for the fish, but John had promised coffee, and after that exhausting morning workout, he wouldn’t mind a little himself.  
 

**

   
   
 _When I say we'll be cool I think that you know what I mean_ …  
____  
   
Shortly after the coffee was done, John’s luck officially gave out and it started to rain. They huddled in the tent and fixed themselves a makeshift breakfast-slash-lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But after an hour or so of Matt intermittently playing games on his cell phone, then shutting it off to preserve the battery – even though he kept complaining it was useless without a signal – and proceeding to pester him with items out of the park’s newspaper, John gave up pretending to read the old dilapidated detective novel he’d carted along. It was slowly starting to sink in that there wasn’t much for it.  
   
Their options were pretty limited. They could sit there cooped up all day and hope the weather cleared up enough that dinner wouldn’t be another round of PB and J,  then prepare for the trek back to the car – possibly still in the rain – or they could bite the bullet and make the hike now.  
   
John didn’t know if it was eagerness to get back to ‘civilization’ or out of the rain, but it didn’t take them half as long to reach the car as it did to get to camp, without Matt straying all over the path with that book in his face. He only stopped once, stooping carefully in order to balance the weight of his pack, to pick something out of the gravel lining the footpath.  
   
Matt brushed the dirt off it, and John heard him mutter something under his breath, and tuck it into the pocket of his hoodie.  
   
“Alright?” John asked, instead of saying ‘keep up’.  
   
“Huh?” Matt said, looking up at him and giving his head a quick toss to flick his wet, clinging bangs off of his face. “Oh yeah, all good. Sorry.” Matt jogged the few paces he’d fallen behind and fell back in step behind him.  
 

 ** 

   
   
 _Superman or Green Lantern ain’t got nothin’ on me,_  
____  
   
“Stop, stop, stop, McClane! Whoa.”  
   
They hadn’t been on the road for a full five minutes before Matt’s hurried shouting nearly gave John a damn heart attack. He mashed the brake, bringing the car skidding to a halt on the gravelled dirt track leading out of the park, actually glad at the moment that it wasn’t paved – asphalt would have been slick as ice in this weather.  
   
Matt was already pulling at the door handle and clambering out the passenger side door before the car had come to a full stop. What the hell was going on?  
   
John pulled to the side of the road before getting back out into the rain to follow Matt, who had already jogged off a good 20 yards back down the road. John couldn’t be sure he wasn’t imagining it, but the rain seemed to be letting up. It would be just his luck.  
   
The gutters at the roadside were moving with swift-flowing brown torrents and eddies of water from the hours of summer rain, and either John was seeing things, or Matt was carefully approaching the edge of the embankment, and getting ready to wade right into it. Probably to point out some sort of venomous water-gecko in desperate need of identification.  
   
When John caught up with him, he saw what had caught the kid’s eye.  
   
“Kid, don’t. Leave it alone,” John said, following Matt’s gaze to where it was fixated on a large flat rock rising out of the middle of the temporarily engorged creek. “The water level will drop, and they’ll be fine.”

On top of the rock, pacing frantically from edge to edge but too afraid to risk the current of the flood, was a tiny little raccoon cub. It couldn’t have weighed more than three or four pounds.   
   
“No but, the mother, John,” Matt argued, without turning to look at him, and gingerly taking a couple of steps further down the bank. “She’ll drown if we don’t…and then what?”  
   
John couldn’t deny the mother looked like she was struggling. Unable to force her cub to attempt the swim, she was battling the current, furiously using her paws to paddle herself anxiously between the rock where he was stranded, and the opposite shore where a second tiny cub sat licking the muddy floodwaters off its fur.  
   
Matt’s sneakers inevitably skidded in the loose scree of the bank and he slid a couple of feet, planting both palms behind him to bring himself to a stop before he went head-first into the drink. It looked painful but Matt merely dusted his palms off – including the one John had doctored for him the day before to much greater complaint – on his jeans. The brief commotion drew a white-rimmed look of panic from the mother.  
   
“You nuts kid? Get outta there! You don’t get between an animal and its babies – Jesus!” John cursed, taking a couple steps after the kid and slipping a foot or so down the slope himself.  
   
“Well...then cover me!” Matt called over his shoulder, before wading right into the swirling mud and water.  
   
Cover him!? John cast around, his eye settling on a nearby shrub with a jutting branch. By the time he had managed to wrench the branch of green wood free of the bush and turn back to the creek, sure enough the mother had started to round the rock from the other side, and was getting ready to make a beeline for Matthew.  
   
“Christ,” John said, skidding the rest of the way down the hill in his hurry. He got there just in time to thrust his leafy barrier across the water, keeping the mother effectively barricaded away from Matt and the stranded cub. This was ridiculous. And dangerous.  
   
Matt, seemingly oblivious to this development, was busy tugging his damp hoodie off over his head. Something fell out of the pocket, and landed in the water with a plop.  
   
Then, apparently at least aware it would be extremely unwise to try and pick up a wild animal with his bare hands, Matt tossed his sweatshirt over top of the cub and scooped it up. But then instead of bringing the ends together and using it like a sack to carry the animal safely, Matt proceeded to carefully swaddle the damn thing up like a baby.

John could even hear him cooing reassuring words he couldn’t quite decipher from his perch on the bank. But from here he could see that the mother raccoon had decided, that while maybe she could have taken Matt on, adding John and his tree branch to the mix might have her outmatched. She had turned around and was making her way back to the safety of the opposite bank, and her other cub.  
   
The bank where Matt was headed.  
   
“Hurry up, kid, if the mother gets to shore, you’re not gonna be able to put that thing down without catching hell from her.”  
   
“I’m on it!” Matt called, wading the rest of the way across the little stream and putting his bundle down.  
   
He took a couple steps – but not enough of them as far as John was concerned –  back into the water to watch the little family reunite in satisfaction, before forging his way back to John’s side.  
   
“Aw, shit,” said, when he shook out his now thoroughly filthy hoodie, and checked the pocket. “I dropped it.  
   
John remembered the yellow looking stone that Matt had picked up on their way to the car.  
   
He couldn’t believe he was about to do this, but the mother raccoon already appeared to be leading her little ones away, and John was satisfied it was probably safe now – if not still pretty stupid.  
   
He waded into the muddy flood, soaking himself all the way up to the knees, until he reached the spot he’d seen Matt pull his sweatshirt off. John felt around in the mud with the toe of his boot until he nudged a couple of rocks.  With a grimace, he bent down and reached in to bring them all up to the surface. The dirty rainwater was fucking freezing.  
   
Sure enough one of them was the pale, yellowish colour of the one Matt had lost.  
   
“You rescued my fossil!” Matt exclaimed, with a laugh, clapping his hands together in surprise and delight like a little kid. “I think it’s a trilobite.”  
   
John looked down at the thing to examine it, and not at all to hide his sappy, indulgent smile, as he trudged out of the muck. Lo and behold there was the imprint of half of something that looked like your average cockroach to John.  
   
“And now that _you’re_ done rescuing Rocky, can we finally get outta here?” he asked, handing Matt his prehistoric treasure back, and shaking his hand to rid it of the muddy water and the chill.  
   
“Who’s Rocky?” Matt asked, stepping forward to towel John’s arm off with his ruined hoodie.  
   
“Rocky, you know ‘Rocky Raccoon, he fell back in his room, only to find Gideon’s bible’?” Even Matt couldn’t complain that the Beatles weren’t classic.  
   
“You mean Bert.”  
   
“You named him Bert?” John asked as he climbed out of the ditch, irresistibly reminded of Lucy’s pickerel named Kenny.  
   
“All raccoons are named Bert,” Matt affirmed, accepting the hand up John offered him, and climbing back to level ground.  
   
“So his little brother over there…”

“Bert.”  
   
“And the mother.”  
   
“Also Bert. But it could be short for Roberta.”  
   
“Roberta Raccoon. Much better than Rocky.” John started to lead the way back to the car. Sure enough, the rain had stopped while they were messing around in the mud. Just John’s luck, indeed.  
   
“I’m sure Roberta thinks so.”  
   
“Alright smartass, are we done?”  
   
“In a rush to get here, now you’re in a rush to leave,” Matt scolded, shaking his head sadly, as he jogged the few steps to catch him up. John slung an arm around his neck when he got there, and pulled him close.  
   
“You know maybe I shoulda let you keep that stupid field book after all,” he said, into Matt’s wet, bedraggled hair. “I’m sure it would have told you not to ever come between rabies-prone rodents and their cubs.”  
   
“Hey I’ve got you watching my back, I’ll be fine,” Matt said, grinning, when John let him go. “You know next time,” he said thoughtfully, looking down at his little yellow stone. “I think I’ll bring a different book. Maybe one of the old ones I had when I was a kid, about fossils, or astronomy.  
   
“Next time?” John stopped walking, to turn and look the kid in the eye.  
   
“Sure,” Matt said, with a shrug.  
   
“I thought this was a contender for the worst vacation ever?”

   
Matt tipped his head back and looked up at the sky, to watch the sunshine starting to break through the clouds.  
   
“It wasn’t so bad,” he admitted.  
   
“Sure, they got terabytes here, after all,” John said, getting them moving down the road again.  
   
“Trilobites,” Matt corrected him. “…And campfires. The campfire was pretty nice.”  
   
“And stars,” John reminded him.  
   
Huh. Seemed like maybe they had made some memories after all.  
   
“And showers,” Matt was saying, with a sly sideways glance that quickly turned sober and maybe even a little guilty. “…Besides, if we come back again, maybe you can actually do what you came to do.”  
   
John thought maybe he’d already done it. He wasn’t going to try to explain that part though, it didn’t matter much. Especially not now that there was going to be a next time. Maybe then he really would finally get that day of quiet R&R out on the lake.  
   
And even if he didn’t, John thought – as Matt bumped their shoulders together and pointed out that they both probably needed another shower when they got home now – well then, that might be okay too.  
   
 

_END_

 

 

  
   
   
_________  
 **Sunshine Superman**  
Donovan

Sunshine came softly through my a-window today  
Could've tripped out easy a-but I've a-changed my ways  
It'll take time, I know it but in a while  
You're gonna be mine, I know it, we'll do it in style  
'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine

I'll tell you right now  
Any trick in the book now, baby, all that I can find  
Everybody's hustlin' just to have a little scene  
When I say we'll be cool I think that you know what I mean  
We stood on a beach at sunset, do you remember when?  
I know a beach where, baby, a-it never ends  
When you've made your mind up forever to be mine

Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm  
I'll pick up your hand and slowly blow your little mind  
'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine  
I'll tell you right now  
Any trick in the book now, baby, all that I can find

Superman or Green Lantern ain't got a-nothin' on me  
I can make like a turtle and dive for your pearls in the sea, yeah!  
A you-you-you can just sit there a-thinking on your velvet throne  
'bout all the rainbows a-you can a-have for your own  
When you've made your mind up forever to be mine  
I'll pick up your hand and slowly blow your little mind  
When you've made your mind up forever to be mine

I'll pick up your hand  
I'll pick up your hand


End file.
